


look to your kingdoms (i am coming for them all)

by deathsweetqueen



Series: the flowers in my ribcage are dead [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: BAMF Tony Stark, Canon Divergence - Iron Man 2, F/M, Foursome - F/M/M/M, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Grief/Mourning, Hindu Tony Stark, Hurt Tony Stark, Indian Tony Stark, Iron Man 2, M/M, Moresomes, Palladium Poisoning, Queerplatonic Relationships, Self-Harm, Terminal Illnesses, Threesome - M/M/M, Tony Stark Does What He Wants, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-14
Updated: 2019-11-14
Packaged: 2021-01-30 14:36:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21429817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathsweetqueen/pseuds/deathsweetqueen
Summary: It’s on February 22, 2010 that Tony realises he’s dying, that he’ll be dead within two months, because humans were not made to be half-metal and he’d been living a life that he was never meant to live.That’s it, two months, sixty days, give or take, one thousand, four hundred and forty hours, and he’ll be dead, his heart will stop breathing, his lungs will stop pumping, his synapses will stop firing, and he’ll be dead, and then, he’ll turn blue and swollen like a corpse (no,a corpse), and he’ll start to rot, decay, turn fetid, and he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know what will happen after that.
Relationships: Clint Barton/Phil Coulson/Natasha Romanov/Tony Stark, Clint Barton/Phil Coulson/Tony Stark, Clint Barton/Tony Stark, Natasha Romanov/Tony Stark, Phil Coulson/Tony Stark
Series: the flowers in my ribcage are dead [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1544947
Comments: 42
Kudos: 220
Collections: Marvel Rare Pair Bingo 2019





	look to your kingdoms (i am coming for them all)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the "Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov/Phil Coulson" square for the Marvel Rare Pair Bingo 2019.
> 
> Just to clarify the relationships in this fic, there is an overall agentironhawkwidow going on, but the specific sexual relationships in that poly are agentironhawk, agenthawk and ironwidow, whereas I would say that Clint, Natasha and Phil together are in a queerplatonic relationship within the overall poly, if that makes sense.
> 
> The title for this poem comes from Elisabeth Hewer's poem collection, Wishing for Birds.

It’s on February 22, 2010 that Tony realises he’s dying, that he’ll be dead within two months, because humans were not made to be half-metal and he’d been living a life that he was never meant to live.

That’s it, two months, sixty days, give or take, one thousand, four hundred and forty hours, and he’ll be dead, his heart will stop breathing, his lungs will stop pumping, his synapses will stop firing, and he’ll be dead, and then, he’ll turn blue and swollen like a corpse (no, _a corpse_), and he’ll start to rot, decay, turn fetid, and he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know what will happen after that.

There are many stories.

His mother had many stories.

His father had many stories.

His mother was a woman of faith, of great faith, and she believed there was something after, something waiting, something short-lived because he’d come back down again; maybe, after everything he’d done, he’d come back as a cockroach or a rat, and he’d have to do it all over again.

His mother was a woman of science as well and in equal measure had to parse out to him, as a boy, theories of rebirth as well as theories of entropy and decay. After all of that confusion, he didn’t know what he believed in, and so at fourteen, when his mother asked him if he’d do _baranyasam_, he’d agreed without fully understanding what it meant to do such a thing.

He was fine with it now, happy to avoid any and all process of rebirth, but still, who knows, who _really_ knows what happens when that final instant ends, when his body stops working and returns to meat, who knows what waits for him.

His father, on the other hand, was a man of few words, few thoughts, and he’d slurred to Tony once, eyes hazed over, brow damp, _we all return to the earth, boy, we rot and rot and rot and then, the worms eat us, and then we become shit, that’s what humans are in the end, we’re shit._

Not the most inspiring or comforting sentiments to teach a six-year-old, but that was dear old Dad.

And so he’s stuck here, stuck between the hourglass of _karma_ he has to wade through, a promise of _moksha_ when his eyes close for the final time, and the sickening thought of just _nothing_, nothing, just worms and shit.

Had it been anyone but JARVIS, he would have thought he was being lied to.

Tony has been lied to a number of times, you see.

People have made it their life’s work to pull the wool over their eyes, and fucking Stane was only the latest in all of that.

He closes his eyes, sees Obadiah’s hungry, haunted, pale eyes, his smile like he’s realised he’s a jackal with teeth, looming over him with all that bulk, and Tony’s heart, the only thing that makes him function, that makes him breath and think and smile, because what is he anymore without the arc reactor, the Ten Rings have ruined that, and he thinks, _let him burn, let him burn, if the Gods I believe in are real, let him burn._

He’s lying in his bed, Natasha’s warm head resting on his hip, red hair spilling out across his belly, bright as copper even in the sliver of moonlight that edges into his bedroom through the windows in sharp angles, his head propped up on Phil’s shoulder, a thin, dry hand knotting in his hair, and Clint draped across his calves, on his stomach, snoring into the sheets.

JARVIS is very clear, very circumspect.

He speaks Tamil, the way that Tony’s mother used to speak, so Tony can have secret conversations with him, without anyone else ever knowing what they’re whispering to each other (the first Jarvis used to do that too, learned Tamil just so he could whisper to Tony, comment on that hideous tie that CFO was wearing or how he thought spinach and feta rolls were such a cheap effort – he misses that, he misses the whispering).

JARVIS has never lied to him before.

To be fair, he is incapable of lying; Tony didn’t build him, his coding, that way, because the first Jarvis didn’t lie – Tony had admired him for it, just one of things, for being the man that Tony may never be, the best man that Tony has never known, will ever know.

“I am sorry, Sir,” he says, and Tony can see it, the first Jarvis standing in front of him, handsome, with salt and pepper hair, head bowed, eyes kind, mouth a solemn, strained line, hands stiff by his side.

Tony takes a deep breath. He turns his head. Natasha breathes against his stomach, rustling the short, dark hairs there; Clint snuffles and snores loudly, a sound cutting through the room; Phil mutters something about _salted caramel pancakes_ and his hand tightens in Tony’s hair.

Strange, to think in a few months he may never feel this again, never see the bright, copper fall of Natasha’s hair in the corner of his eyes, Clint’s warm, teasing eyes, Phil’s gravid, clear bearing.

Strange.

His lungs hurt – now, there’s no wonder why; there was never any wonder why, but to have this sort of clarity, well, it’s just fucking worse. 

He licks his lips. “Will it hurt?” he asks, voice small and uncertain and childlike, and he remembers what it’s like to be five, to stand in front of Jarvis, head bowed, and ask, _will I ever have friends, Jarvis?_

A month later, Tony had met Tiberius Stone, and a part of him had wished, still wished, he’d never wanted to have friends in the first place – it might have saved him a lot of agony, heartache, misery at Ty’s hands.

A part of him wants to suffer, right until the end – _suffering is braver than dying_, his mother used to say, brush his hair back, _this is how you get up there, to Vaikuntha, to God, to moksha, you suffer and then you die._

Tony is intimately close with suffering, he’s suffered all of his life, first with Howard, and then with Ty, and then with Afghanistan and the Ten Rings and Stane and his fucking weapons – suffering is closer to him than any lover he’s ever had.

And he wants it, to know that he’d fight it up until his blood turns completely diseased and he turns into a corpse, he wants to fight.

An easy death wouldn’t earn him liberation; it would be weakness, and Tony has suffered many things, but he has never suffered weakness.

Natasha would want that, he knows; Clint and Phil would want it too. They’d want him to fight, to keep fighting, to start a war, if it means coming back to them, to be with them for a great many years, maybe decades.

That’s a laugh.

He’ll be forty this year; that, in itself, is a major breakthrough, what with all the drinking, the drugs, the shitty sleeping, eating habits, the nights he’d spent over his workstation, huddled over a gun, a bomb casing, body armour, or at a computer, with a mug of coffee mixed with Red Bull, black and piping hot.

“I am afraid so, Sir,” JARVIS answers, solemnly, voice distorted and thin, like even he doesn’t like telling him this, like it’s the worst thing he’s ever had to say.

JARVIS is his son, just like DUM-E and BUTTERFINGERS are as well, like U is his daughter; they are the only children he’ll ever have, and he’s contented himself with that, no wife, no husband, no babies crawling around the place, and he would give anything so that JARVIS didn’t have to do this, tell him this, be his confidant in this.

No child should have to tell their parent that they’re dying, that there’s nothing to be done, that it’s going to hurt.

“To be fair, Sir,” JARVIS continues, hesitant. “You were never a man who was going to die a quiet death.”

Tony almost laughs, if not for the blaze of white crawling into his vision, on all sides.

“Thank you for letting me know, J,” he says, quietly, baring a hard, reckless smile to no one.

“There is absolutely no need to thank me for anything, Sir,” JARVIS says, sternly.

The grief wells up thick in his throat, and he abruptly has the urge to cry.

No, he has to be strong, he has to be brave, his mother taught him to be brave.

“Will you tell Colonel Rhodes?” JARVIS asks, curiously.

Another person, watching the scene, would find it odd that JARVIS would wonder if he would tell news of his terminal illness to his best friend instead of the three human beings curled up to him in this giant bed, the three people he’s actually having sex with and routinely has conversations that include the words _I love you_, but Tony knows, he knows that lovers, boyfriends, girlfriends, they all come and go, but Rhodey, Rhodey is Tony’s constant, Tony’s heart.

Even when Tony had nothing, he had Rhodey.

“No,” Tony says, voice sharper than it should be, because JARVIS is only asking a question, he shouldn’t take it out on him. “No, I won’t… he doesn’t need to know.”

It would only worry him, wherever Rhodey is, stress him out, make him anxious – Rhodey didn’t eat very well when he was anxious, and Tony hated seeing him like that.

And what was the point anyway, when there’s nothing to be done, there’s no more options to be explored, nothing to be saved?

Months ago, when Tony had first found out that his blood was slowly rotting due to the arc reactor, when Tony still had hope that a core could be found for the reactor without killing him in the process, there may have been some reason in telling Rhodey.

But now, now, when everything’s done and dusted, when there is no element, no permutation, no combination left for him to try and fix himself, when Tony is months away from his corpse being burned, well, it would just be cruel.

JARVIS isn’t upset by Tony’s cold tone, doesn’t take it personally, and instead, remains silent. After the pause stretches and swells between them, he chimes in.

“Are you sure, Sir?” he asks, carefully. “My research into the subject tells me that human beings require contact and comfort during such times. Colonel Rhodes would be an appropriate choice for such things, in my understanding.”

Tony shakes his head. “He’d just… he’d get upset,” he says, lamely. “I don’t do well when Rhodey’s upset. Rhodey’s the… strong one. I’m not strong. I should be strong for him this time. I need to… I need to be the strong one this time. I need to be strong. My mother taught me to be strong.”

_Why should he watch? Why should he watch as I rot and become diseased and finally die? Doesn’t he deserve better than that? Don’t I owe him more than that, sitting at my deathbed, watching me breathe my last?_

“And Agents Romanoff, Barton and Coulson?” JARVIS queries, tone flat, displeased. “Am I to understand that you will not inform any of them of your condition either?”

Tony twists his head, catches sight of the little twist to Natasha’s pink, rosebud mouth, sees the papery shell, devoid of fire and light, that she would become if she knew, the laughter dimming from Clint, the wan, breathless look that would take form on Phil’s handsome face.

God, what a terrible world that would be.

He doesn’t want to die in that world.

“No,” he says, heavily, stretching into the ache in his lower back. “Call the lawyers, would you, J?”

“Sir,” JARVIS protests.

“Tony?”

Tony looks down to see Natasha glowering up at him. The moonlight shudders through the window, casting the bed in sharp, pale angles, and illuminating her eyes crusted over in sleep, her face smooth and a little marked without makeup, the odd dark spot, acne scar.

“It’s four in the morning,” she demands, voice gruff and raw from sleep. “Why are you still awake?”

Tony offers her a half-smile and brushes her hair out of her face with his free hand, even as his heart pounds like a jackhammer in his ribcage, a last vestige of life. “I was just getting some work done, it’s fine,” he lies easily.

“It’s really not,” she scolds, slowly. “This is the first time you’ve gotten any sleep in the last seventy-four hours.”

“You were on a mission; how do you even know that?” Tony complains.

Natasha shrugs. “JARVIS was very forthcoming with the information when we returned.”

Tony mutters something unfavourable under his breath.

“Sir, I take great offence to that,” JARVIS reproaches. “I would not volunteer such information unless I was asked, and there is currently no protocol that prevents me from volunteering that information. Should you decide differently, that you would prefer that I would not volunteer that information, please, feel free to adjust my protocols.”

Tony scowls. “I am a grown adult,” he says, patiently, a line of steel hidden. “Yes, I have shitty sleeping habits-”

“-and eating habits and drinking habits and communication habits and-”

“-but,” Tony’s look is stern, a warning in itself. “I don’t need to be watched over and supervised like I’m a seven-year-old. I am perfectly capable of choosing the correct time to go to bed. If I didn’t see one in seventy-four hours, that was my choice.” He softens the tone of his voice, when Natasha pouts, sidling closer to him. “Thank you for wanting to take care of me; I really appreciate it.”

Natasha gives him a soft, sad look. “Not that much,” she says, almost definitively. “You’re too independent for all of that.”

Tony shrugs. “You wouldn’t like me half as much as you do if I wasn’t independent,” he reminds her. “You’d think I was needy and clingy, and you’d leave me, very, very fucking quickly. You aren’t one to tolerate that sort of thing, Tasha.”

Natasha palms his jaw and leans in, soft and sweet, to press her mouth against his cheek, where his stubble is rough and wild. “You’re wrong, Tony,” she sighs. “You’re so wrong. Please, go to sleep now. I…” she takes a deep breath. “I worry about you, a lot of the time, especially when I’m gone.”

“I know you do,” he says, fondly, and smooths her hair back, drawing a huff out of her. “What?”

“Don’t touch my hair,” she says, haughtily, and promptly squawks when he tugs the end of her braid, looping it around his palm.

“You should go to sleep,” he says, breathing deep and measured, his lungs squeezing a little too tight. “You’ve had a very long couple of days.”

“So have you,” she argues, watching him with hooded eyes.

Tony kisses her, gentle and lingering, and slings a strong arm around so that she can hum and curl against his side, like a pleased cat.

“I’ll sleep too,” he reassures. “We’ll sleep together, it’s okay.”

Natasha nods against the rise of his ribs, and he forces himself to close his eyes, forces himself to lose all the dangerous thought, the brief, dizzy glimpse of the future doesn’t want to acknowledge, and he’s more aware than ever of the arc reactor slowly killing him. In his periphery, Clint’s arms around him tighten, snuffling against the slope of Tony’s hip, and his sharp elbow catches him in the rib, making Tony wince.

Tony, dead soon.

JARVIS and the bots, orphans.

Rhodey, Pepper, Happy, Peggy, Sharon, Phil, Natasha, Clint, all doubtlessly furious.

He sighs and closes his eyes.

* * *

When Tony wakes up the next day, the bed is empty, cold, like there was never anyone there but him. For a brief moment, he lies in bed, lets the sunlight dapple across the pale sheets, drags them over his shoulders, the thin papery material scratching against his bare, sensitive skin.

Would it be mercy if he dies like this?

There are stories of it, twenty-year-olds dead in their beds come one morning.

He should be one of those stories.

It might be easier for everyone, for him, if this happens.

Oh, God, is this what he’s been reduced to, lying in bed and thinking of easy, soft ways to die, because he’s too much of a fucking milksop to die like he should, like his mother would have wanted him to.

_Suffering is braver than dying, suffering is braver than dying_, he reminds himself.

And there was no way he could lie in this bed indefinitely in any case.

Something writhes in his belly, twisting, and he groans against the ache, restless, unsure of what to do.

For now, there is only Tony’s death looming in the not-so-far distance and all the pieces he had to put in place before that particular hellhound comes for him; all else could wait, including rest.

He struggles to get out of bed – the rolling itself making the muscles in his back pull uncomfortably, and he feels eighty instead of forty. He finally gets on his feet against all the efforts of the palladium in his body and steadies himself before moving.

He leans into the phantom embrace of no one, remembers that the bed is empty, cold, just like he is, a useless husk wanted for nothing else, and lets himself stew in that sour resentment just for a moment.

For fuck’s sake, he’s dying, he’ll be dead in two months, he should be allowed to wallow, agonise over this – despite what the world thinks, he is no machine and is still very much a man, and he’s dying.

The resentment swells raw and hot and he bites it back, cages it, catches it behind his teeth, the instinctive scream of rage, the urge to trash his bedroom, to destroy wood and glass and to sit in the pieces of his life and scream.

Has he not earned this, at least, above all else?

And then he walks.

“Are they still here, J?” he asks, after he’s brushed his teeth and had a shower and washed the night’s grime off his body.

“Are you referring to Agents Romanoff, Barton and Coulson?” JARVIS queries.

“Yeah.”

“I believe Agent Romanoff and Agent Coulson have left the premises, but Agent Barton is preparing breakfast in the kitchen,” JARVIS answers him. He switches cleanly to Tamil. “Are you absolutely certain you do not want to inform any of them of your most recent prognosis?”

Tony catches his eyes in a mirror as he proceeds down a hallway and is forced to stop.

God, he looks like he’s been through a meat grinder.

His hair is a disorder of its own, greasy and weighing heavy atop his head and with grey streaking the edges, because he hasn’t had the time, the strength to actually have it coloured and he’s forty in two months. There are dark bruises under his eyes, like he’d been punched twice over, and he hadn’t the chance to apply any concealer. His lips are pale and chapped, and the white singlet that he wears hangs limply over a thin, bony frame.

He hates it, he hates how he looks, he hates that anyone, let alone Clint, with his beautiful arms and wheat-gold hair and handsome jaw, has to see him like this, a pale, fraught imitation of the man he fell in love with, and the back of his neck prickles hotly.

He hates even showing this side of him, the damaged, grotty side, showing his age and his flaws and all the things in him that are proof that he’s an unworthy romantic partner – like Clint and Natasha and Phil need any more proof of that now.

Clint turns at the stove when he hears Tony’s footsteps, and his face splits in a grin.

“Hey, you,” he says, fondly. “You’re finally up.”

“I am,” he says, and his voice comes out like he’s a chain smoker.

Clint’s face contorts with concern and he pads around the counter, coming from him, so he can wrap his arms around Tony’s waist, cup his jaw in his hand.

“Hey, is everything okay, babe?” he asks, biting his lip. “You slept for a long time.”

Tony looks away before Clint can catch the hollow, gaping look in his eyes. “Yeah, I, uh, didn’t you hear? I hadn’t slept in seventy-four hours,” he says, trying to inject a bit of humour into his voice.

Clint clucks his tongue and smooths a thumb over his cheek. “Did you sleep well at least?”

_No._

“I did,” he lies.

He’s a good liar, he always has been, much better than a SHIELD agent, because he was born into a family of liars, into a life of liars, a society of liars, and he’s lied both to save his life and save his pride and save his mind – Clint is good, Natasha is better, Phil is even better, but Tony is best.

And Tony’s glad it’s Clint here, in the kitchen, and not Natasha and not Phil. Clint has a kind heart, where Natasha’s is cold, born of years spent around monsters and the bottom feeders of the world, and where Phil’s is logical, almost cruel.

Clint’s eyes catch everything, more than Natasha’s and more than Phil’s – otherwise, he wouldn’t have the call sign _Hawkeye_ – but he’s softer than them, still fierce and with enough steel in his spine to draw Tony’s attention, but soft, nonetheless, the more likely out of his three lovers to let things by, if he puts enough of a fight or a fit.

They aren’t Rhodey or Pepper, they aren’t his _people_, the way that Rhodey and Pepper are, they haven’t seen him when he’s bruised and battered and bleeding in a hospital bed because Ty and him got into a fight and it ended badly for him; they haven’t seen him wan and breathless and sharp when the police come to his door and tell him that his parents are dead and he has to go and identify their bodies, bring them home, burn them, do all of those ceremonial things that have to be done because it’s what his mother would have wanted; they haven’t seen him stumbling around drunk and filthy and waking up in the aftermath of orgies.

Tony loves Clint and Phil and Natasha; he loves them like he needs them to breathe, but they aren’t his _people_, like Rhodey and Pepper, and they don’t know him well enough to pick out all the things going wrong in this world.

He smiles like he’s born to smile, a gargoyle’s smile, and says, “Are you making pancakes?”

“I am,” Clint agrees.

“Did you forget that I don’t eat eggs?” Tony points out, a little amused.

“Ha, jokes on you, it’s _eggless _pancake mix,” Clint retorts.

Tony just shakes his head. He opens his mouth, a hundred different sentences making his throat full, and he still doesn’t know what to say. He should devolve into a joke, go on with the banter, but a part of him wants to say it, wants to say _I’m going to die in two months_, and see how he reacts.

Out of his three lovers, Clint will take it the hardest.

Phil will demand answers, will demand some way out of it, will demand a paper trail that will lead to him the great, grand solution. Phil is a man of cool, hard logic. There is no problem that he cannot answer, that he cannot fix, and he is a man that won’t stomach _no_ for an answer, not where there’s some twisted, unbelievable way of looking at a problem. Even with no scientific or medical knowledge, Tony would still put his coins in Phil’s pot over someone else’s.

Natasha will deny it, will deny it’s happening, but she will accept it, more than the other two – Natasha and he are the same soul, he thinks, the ones that accept the hard truths in life and do all the dirty, filthy things that are necessary to make the world keep turning; Natasha is the one that will keep a first aid kit planted somewhere on her gorgeous body, will tag every single one of Tony’s reactions, to watch and wait for the moment that Tony gives out, Tony stops breathing, Tony dies, because she knows that he will be more grateful to that over needless aid, to be there, to hold his hand, to smooth his brow and not say another word.

But Clint, Clint is the kind one, the one that looks at him like he’s the sun and stars and the moon, the one that would sit with him and brush his hair back when he’s throwing up into a toilet, the one that will wipe his brow with a damp cloth, the one that will rub his feet and squeeze out charley horses when Tony is in too much pain to get out of bed.

Natasha and Phil love him, love him like nothing else, he would put money on their love, but Clint hoards him like a dragon hoards gold.

No, he is not ready for this, he is not ready for roars, howls of desperate anger, terror, concern.

He closes his eyes and leans into Clint’s chest. Clint cups the back of his skull and kisses the fluff of his hair.

God, he needs more, more time, more love, more teeth, more blood, more heart muscle, more faith, more everything.

There is still so much of his life, the universe around him, to mould.

“How many?” Clint asks, dragging him over the stove.

“Two,” Tony replies.

“Only two? What, you don’t have much appetite?” Clint says, face etched in concern.

_I threw up twice in the toilet before I came down here and I wasn’t even hungover_ is what he should say.

“I’m just… I guess I’m not really hungry,” Tony says instead.

“How about this? How about I make some, and if you want more later, you can eat it later?” Clint offers.

“Old pancakes?”

Clint lifts an eyebrow. “Oh, I’m sorry, would you prefer it if I stayed in this kitchen, wearing an apron, and when you decided you wanted pancakes, I make them to order for you?”

“Yes,” Tony says, simply. “I would love you wearing the apron. Could you be naked at the same time?”

Clint pauses. “Do you want me to be?” he asks, dubiously.

“I always want you to be naked,” Tony says, lasciviously.

Clint turns his head. “You want to have sex on the counter?” he offers.

“What about the pancakes?” Tony asks, eyeing the stove carefully. “I think they’re burning.”

“Shit,” Clint declares and runs to the stove, dumping the smoking pan and the charred remains of the pancakes into the sink and running the water. “Shit.” He stares down at the mess in the sink. “Aw, pancakes,” he says, so morosely, that Tony wants to hold him close and kiss the sadness off his face.

Tony lifts an eyebrow. “You want to have sex now?”

Clint huffs and leans back against the sink. “On the counter?” he clarifies.

Tony jumps up, ignoring the weak flutter of his heart in his chest, the way strange increase and then sudden decrease in pressure in his abdomen, like a balloon filling and then abruptly deflating. He plants his hands behind him, balancing himself, and spreads his legs, waggling his eyebrows.

“Why don’t you put your money where your mouth is, Barton?” he asks, cockily.

Clint rubs a hand over his dark blonde hair. “Oh, don’t you worry about that, baby?” he says, smoothly. “Hawkeye never misses his target.”

Tony’s laughter is quickly swallowed up by Clint’s skilful mouth on his, hands bearing him down onto the counter.

* * *

Natasha returns in three days, without any particular fanfare.

One moment, she’s not there, and when Tony climbs up from his workshop that night, she’s dressed in sweats in his lounge, hair damp and a dark auburn, clinging to the back of her neck, legs folded underneath her. She’s deftly manoeuvring chopsticks into a carton of Chinese food that makes Tony’s stomach turn, and she’s avidly watching an episode of Family Guy on the television.

“Is there meat in that?” he demands, lingering in the doorway.

Natasha abruptly stops whatever she’s doing, turning to him with a deer-caught-in-headlights look in her eyes, wide and big as the moon, a mouthful of noodles hanging limply from her chins in the air, just above the open carton. She quickly swallows it down.

“Kung pao chicken,” she admits, guiltily.

Tony sighs. “You know the rules,” he says, crossly.

Natasha winces. “No non-vegetarian food in the house,” she says, sullenly.

“Air freshener, a lot of it,” he orders.

Natasha salutes him. “Will do.”

Tony itches at the feel of Natasha’s cat’s eyes clasped on him, surveying him from head to foot, like she’s peeling him to the bone, watching for weakness or for something else – God, out of anyone else in this world, the one who would find something wrong with him is Natasha; he’s almost regretting her quick return from the mission.

“And dump it outside, not in the mansion,” he says, sternly.

“I will,” Natasha soothes.

Natasha isn’t as subtle as she thinks is, not after all these years that Tony has loved her, gone to bed with her, laughed with her, but she is better at this, the watching, the peeling, than Tony’s other partners, and sometimes, he wonders what it is that Natasha is looking for, what she plans on doing with this information.

“I told her not to get the Chinese food,” Clint calls out from the kitchen. “I’m making _dinner_!” he says, offended that anyone would dare to resort to take-out when he was in the midst of cooking up a storm.

Natasha puts aside the take-out container, on the table after Tony hisses at her putting it on the couch, and pats her flat belly that never grows. “I could eat so much more,” she sighs. “What’s on the stove, Clint?”

“Lasagne, and it’s in the oven,” Clint replies. “Oh, and caramel slice for dessert.”

Tony sighs and sinks onto the couch beside Natasha, nose scrunching at the smell of the chicken, even as his stomach rumbles. “He’s such a good homemaker, isn’t he?”

“He is,” Natasha agrees.

“Fuck you both,” Clint says, cheerfully, as he enters the lounge, wearing a hot pink apron that says _I am too sexy to be 60, _with a tray of orange juice.

“You are,” Tony sighs, taking one of the glasses. “You are too sexy to be 60.”

“Thanks, babe,” Clint says, pressing his mouth to Tony’s matted curls atop his head.

Tony leans back, head tilted, and closes his eyes, letting Natasha and Clint talk about something or another in the background, their voices muted. He only stirs, and stirs heavily, when he hears nothing and Natasha’s small, thin hand settles on his thigh.

He turns his head.

“You look like shit,” she comments, so quiet.

Tony finds himself smiling.

“So, do you,” he replies.

Natasha squeezes his thigh.

* * *

That night, only Phil is missing from Tony’s big, wide bed.

Clint’s legs are twined with his, arm slung low over his hip, and Natasha is curled against his side, head lying where his heart beats.

Tony hates it.

He doesn’t hate Natasha or Clint, or the fact that they’re in his bed, cuddled up to him, but he hates the discomfort.

His stomach doesn’t sit easy, when he’s on his back, on his side, or pretty much any position he takes on the bed, tumbling restlessly.

But if he moves, either Clint or Natasha, or even both, will wake up and question him as to what’s wrong, and they can really be dogs with a bone if they even get the slightest suspicion that he’s keeping something from them.

His neck aches, his heart thrums like he’s been running a marathon in his chest, and he closes his eyes against the yawning quiet of the night.

There will be no sleep that night.

He’ll have to wait for dawn.

* * *

Clint is fuming, pacing back and forth along the lounge like an elephant, arms folded across his chest.

Natasha sits beside Tony on the sofa, reading a book and paying Clint no mind, while Phil is busy with his reports in the single armchair, unaffected by Clint’s fury.

This leaves Tony to be the lucky recipient of Clint’s complaining.

“I mean, it’s just offensive!”

Tony hums in sympathy.

“The STRIKE team are glorified thugs,” Clint tells him, dissatisfied and restless. “They’re guys who point and shoot-”

“So are you,” Tony says and immediately regrets when Clint turns an awful, betrayed look on him.

“I engage in art,” he says, passionately.

“Of course, you do, baby,” Tony replies, soothingly.

“The STRIKE team, on the other hand, have no skill, no artistry, no subtlety to anything they do. They’re just big men in black combat armour, and they walk around thinking they’re so fucking great. And Fury wants me to work with them on this next mission,” Clint says, disgusted.

Tony peers at him. “Are you even allowed to tell me any of this?” he asks, curiously. He turns to Phil, nudging him with a foot. “Isn’t there such a thing as classified information?”

“There is,” Phil agrees, not taking his eyes off the page in his hand. “But we figure if we were stupid enough to fall for someone who’s going to sell SHIELD secrets and screw up our operations, we probably deserve it.”

“Oh,” Tony says, lamely. He shrugs. “Fair.”

Clint snaps his fingers. “Hello, I thought I was complaining about _my_ problem,” he says, snidely, cocking his hip out like he’s a cheerleader and they are all his social handmaidens.

Tony sighs and paints a faux, gargoyle smile on his pink mouth. “Of course, baby, please, keep going,” he sighs.

“Thank you,” Clint says, exasperated. “Like I said, I am _not_ working with a bunch of greaser snakes, and that’s that.”

“Yes, you are,” Phil says, again, without looking from his reports. “Director Fury said you had to, and so you are.”

Clint’s lip curls in a petulant snarl. “But I don’t _want_ to,” he stresses, voice almost a whine.

Tony leans back against the couch; his back hurts, his neck hurts, his stomach hurts, his legs hurt, his chest always fucking hurts, his whole _body_ is hurting, and he is very quickly nearing the end of his patience with Clint’s whinging.

He lifts his head, fixes his boyfriend with a baleful look. “Clearly, no one who makes these decisions for you _cares_ about what you want,” he says, coldly, voice sharp and thin. “Fury has made a choice. Now, Barton, you either suck it up and do as you’re told, or you continue whinging about it and make it unpleasant for everyone involved, including your civilian boyfriend who has been very nice to listen to you complain for the last forty-five minutes and hasn’t said anything, because he is such a nice person. I suggest you go with the former, or my foot might find your ribs and it won’t be pleasant for you.”

“I don’t _want_-”

“But you’ll have to, regardless,” Tony says, dragging his hand over his face. “We all have to do plenty of things in this world that we don’t want to, and we all make it out, just fine. So, I suggest you call up Fury and tell him that you would be _glad_ to work with the… glorified two-dollar thugs and bide your time until you can tell all of them to fuck off.”

Clint falls silent, mouth turning downwards in a pout.

Tony feels a tug of nausea in his belly, and he clambers to his feet, dislodging Natasha’s feet from his lap.

Natasha sends him a towering glare.

“Now, if you’ll all excuse me, I am very tired, and I don’t really care anymore?”

* * *

Phil finds him in the bathroom, curled around the toilet, face wan and bloodless, eyes with dark bruises under them, like he’d been punched twice over.

“Get out,” he rasps, when he sees Phil lingering in the doorway. “Get out, _get out_!”

Phil ignores him.

He should have predicted that.

Instead, the man, in his nice, tailored suit, kneels down beside him, face drawn in concern.

“Was it something you ate?” Phil asks, the dark slash of his brows pulled together.

Tony chuckles. _No, it’s just my body, my blood, my life. It’s all going down the fucking drain._

“Probably,” he says, instead, the lie coming easy to him.

What other option does he have?

He’s always been vain, and the moment that he confesses to these three beautiful people who have chosen to love him that his body is rotting from the inside out, that death is coming for him, well, all that love would disappear.

Not quickly, of course, Phil and Clint and Natasha aren’t so awful as to instantaneously dump a dying man; but it would come slow – they would stay away, longer and longer, that mission and that mission until their lives are all missions and nothing of him; their eyes would avoid him, focus on any healthy part of his body, so they wouldn’t have to see his sickness; there would be guilt, of course, in equal measure with the disgust, because they are good people, at heart, kind people; so, it would come slow, and then one day, Tony would wake up in his big, cold bed and be alone, because that is his death.

Phil clucks his tongue, smooths his hand over Tony’s matted, sweat-damp hair. “Do you think you’re done?” he asks, gently.

Tony stares down at the toilet, his head and eyes swimming. “Yeah,” he slurs, like he’s drunk. “Yeah, I think I’m done.”

“Okay,” Phil murmurs and wraps his arms around Tony’s shoulders, drawing him to his feet.

Tony’s knees turn to jelly, and his feet slip out from underneath him, but Phil catches him, strong and sure, holding him close.

“It’s okay, I’ve got you,” he whispers, nudging his nose against Tony’s temple. “I’ve got you, Tony. You’re gonna be just fine.”

He helps Tony to the bed, and Tony feels like a senior citizen, chafing under the hold, like Phil’s about to suggest that he might benefit from a walker or a pill to make him hard. But he sinks into the bed like it’s made of cotton candy, closing his eyes, and Phil perches himself on the edge of the bed, threading their fingers together.

“Do you want painkillers?” he asks, keeping his voice low.

_It’s not like painkillers do much for me nowadays_, Tony thinks, bitterly, and shakes his head.

“I’ll be fine. I think I just need to rest.”

“Okay,” Phil murmurs and moves to get up, making the bed squeak.

Tony catches onto his hand quickly, keeping him pinned there. “No,” he says, allowing a bit of weakness to inject his voice. “Stay.”

The lines in Phil’s face soften. “Okay, sweetheart. I’ll stay.”

Phil takes a place on the bed again, and Tony pulls him down, closer, so he can lay out beside him, folding his arms around him. Tony rests his head on Phil’s breastbone, above his pounding heart, and closes his eyes.

"Is that why you lost it at Clint?" Phil asks, concerned.

Tony stills. “What?” he asks, carefully.

“Because of the nausea, is that why you lost your temper with Clint downstairs?”

Tony lifts his head from Phil’s chest, staring down at him. “Why do you think that?”

Phil shrugs, his face still soft. “It just seemed very unlike you. I know that Clint was complaining a lot, but-”

“I don’t normally complain about his complaining, so anything I do to stop it is immediately extraordinary and must be ascribed to some illness that I must feeling?” Tony asks, dryly, lifting one perfect eyebrow.

Phil sighs. “I just mean-”

“I did not lose my temper at Clint because I wasn’t feeling well,” he says, flatly. “I lost my temper because I was pissed and tired, which is a normal human condition. I don’t have to be _on_ all the time.”

Phil winds his hand in Tony’s hair. “You know Clint doesn’t complain, maliciously. He just likes a sounding board,” he tells him, gently. “If you play with his ego a little more, he’ll be way less ornery.”

Phil’s hands are so careful in Tony’s hair, kneading his scalp and tugging at the strands just rough enough to make the goosebumps rise across his skin and make his foot kick in pleasure.

He had missed this from Phil the most, the ability to look and catch the things that make Tony melt and turn molten; he’d missed the chance to tease him and drive him made; he’d missed surprising him in his office at the SHIELD barracks, going commando and taunting Phil into bending him over the desk for some afternoon delight.

There had been life and love and pleasure and control to be had, once, before JARVIS had said the words _palladium poisoning_ and _terminal_ to him, and all of that was wasted now, as his body wasted and betrayed him, left him open to overtures like having his head petted like a dog.

“He doesn’t need any more playing with his ego,” Tony says, almost disgusted, even if it is slightly hypocritical – he’s never denied that he’s vain, that he’s arrogant, that he has an ego, but he has never wanted stroking or petting – he’s always associated that with lies, lies, and more lies. “That’ll just make him complacent.”

Phil finds a knot in the nape of his neck that he pushes that makes Tony whine and kick his foot out like a muscle spasm, but he falls silent anyway.

“It’s why you love him so much, and it’s why he loves you so much,” he points out, easy and light.

“It’s different,” Tony complains.

Phil laughs, low and short. “Of course, it is,” he teases. His voice firms, all mirth gone from his voice. “It’s alright, you know.”

Tony turns to him, brow furrowed. “What is?”

There’s a softness to him, in him, that Tony might have once scorned, so many years ago, before he met these three – he had never been able stomach weakness, even at a young age, even from himself, an unwanted, unfortunate leftover from his years of being raised by Howard Stark, however half-heartedly.

Tony thinks he can stomach weakness now, not from himself though.

“To need someone,” Phil murmurs, gently. “To need _us_. We love you, we’d help you if you asked, we’d do anything for you, just as you’d do anything for us.”

“I know…” Tony clears his throat. “I know _that_.”

“Do you?”

Tony doesn’t know what to say to that.

* * *

Tony falls down the stairs one day.

All three of them are at home; even Pepper and Rhodey are there, and they’re in the kitchen, and they’re happy and laughing and so fucking happy, and Tony is in his workshop, watching them, the sight of them so light, so beautiful, through one of JARVIS’ cameras, and his body feels like the graveyard.

He feels like a voyeur, an outsider, watching something he has no place watching, even if it is a room full of the people he loves most in the world, like he doesn’t deserve to be watching this, like this room is full of light and love, and what is he, if not death and rot and ruin?

His stomach rumbles.

So, he climbs the staircase, one step at a time, his body weighing on him heavily, hurting, aching, like he’s put through a meat grinder with each step.

His head swims, his eyes swim, and there’s a strange sensation in his head, like pressure, like pounding.

There are red spots in his vision, like hot chilli flakes rubbing into his eyes, and that’s the last thing he sees when he falls back.

For a second, he’s on his feet, the world is fine and clear, and then, there’s nothing, the world is flipping, and his legs are coming out from underneath him, and he’s crashing, falling down the stairs, head, arms, legs, hips, the softness of his belly, his knees, his feet, his shoulders all hitting the jagged steps, until he’s hitting the ground at the bottom of the stairs with an almighty thud and shout.

His head is pounding, his whole body hurting, bruised and pained and swollen, and he’s groaning, hearing the bots shrieking from inside the transparent workshops, beating at the glass windows that won’t break, not even under their metal strength.

JARVIS is shouting, he thinks, but he can’t do anything about it, he can’t even concentrate long enough to hear what he’s saying, he just wants to curl up into a ball.

He tries, and it hurts so bad that tears edge his eyes, that he thinks, _maybe it would be better if I died like this, maybe it would be easier, oh, God, I want to die like this, let me die, I don’t care anymore, I don’t want to do this anymore, just let me die._

“Shit, Tony! Tony!”

When he looks up, there are five people looming around him, all with various degrees of concern and fear.

“Tony, are you okay?” Pepper asks, leaning forward, her auburn hair hanging around her face in curls.

“I fell,” he says, lamely.

“We can see that,” Clint says, dryly.

All of them turn to him, glaring, and Clint throws his hands up, apologetically, muttering_ sorry_ twice.

“I fell down the stairs.” Tony’s throat flexes. “I need to get up.”

Rhodey winces. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, man.”

“Why? Why not?” Tony asks, belligerently, shooting him a glare.

“Tony, you took a big fall,” Natasha says, gently, crouching down beside his fallen body and squeezing his ankle. “We’re concerned that you might have already injured your spine. If we move you,” her eyes flicker to the others hovering above him. “We could make it worse.”

“Joy,” Tony sighs, grinding his teeth.

“Tony,” Phil says, softly.

Tony shakes his head.

“Hey, Tony,” Phil touches his shoulder, and Tony jerks away, almost instinctively.

“Don’t, _don’t_ touch me,” Tony manages to say, jaw clenching. “I don’t want… stop touching me.”

Phil’s mouth turns down at the corners, eyes worried.

Tony’s neck pulls, the pain flaring hot, and he forces himself to stay still.

“We should call an ambulance,” Pepper murmurs.

“No,” Tony snaps. “No ambulances. Just…”

He takes a slow, steadying breath.

“JARVIS?” he calls out.

“Yes, sir?” JARVIS asks, promptly.

“You have access to the biomarkers; what’s going on?” Tony demands.

“Biomarkers?” Rhodey questions, eyes widening. “Tony, what did you-”

“Your wrist is sprained,” JARVIS goes on. “I detect bruising on your knees and ankles and calves. Your right shoulder is dislocated.”

“My head?” Tony asks, ignoring the soft, sad look in everyone’s faces.

God, that’s the last thing he needs right now, the fucking pity.

“A sign of a mild concussion, but nothing more serious,” JARVIS reassures.

“Can I get up?”

“I would stabilise your shoulder, but it should be safe to rise,” JARVIS explains.

“Okay,” Tony says, heavily.

His hand goes to the buckle on his jeans.

Pepper recoils. “Tony, what are you doing?” she asks, suspiciously.

Tony sends her a withering look. “I need something to tie my shoulder to my body to act as a splint,” he mutters.

He undoes the buckle, pulling the leather from its loops as best as he can. He’s forced to lift his hips up in the air, and the movement jars his shoulder, causing him to bite back a shout.

He throws one hand of the belt over a shoulder and ties it around his body, buckling it tight around his body.

“Okay, I’m going to get up now,” Tony warns. “So, I suggest you move.”

They don’t move.

“For fuck’s sake,” Tony mutters. “I said, _move_.”

They back away like herded sheep.

Tony rises, slowly, to his hips.

His shoulder hurts, a burn, an ache, that sets his teeth on edge, that makes his toes curl in a not-fun way. He blinks away the old tears and climbs to his feet.

He stares at all of them, who stare at him.

“Did you need something?” he asks, wearily.

_I am strong, my mother taught me to be strong_.


End file.
